1. Field of Endeavor
The information disclosed in this patent relates to electrical communications and more particularly to sensors that may respond to relative conditions between a child, a child car seat, and a vehicle by providing humanly perceptible signals in response to the attainment of predetermined conditions.
2. Background Information
Children receive a staggering amount of damage during an automobile accident. Damage to a child's brain may leads to memory impairment, educational dysfunction, and the loss of the ability to read and write. These force trauma injuries may lead to emotional disturbances such as hyperactivity, apathy, or inattentiveness. Most horrific, a child is much more likely than an adult to die during a car crash.
Early on, child car seats have been designed to mitigate injury to children involved in car crashes. From 1898 to the 1960s, child car seats were designed to restrain a child in place while a vehicle was in motion, but not necessarily keep the child safe from harm. In the 1960s, designers added features to keep a child safe in the event of an accident, such as making the safety seat rear facing and utilizing high impact material. Between the 1970s and 1985, there was a massive push to educate the public on the need of safety seats for young children. By 1985, every state in the U.S. had laws requiring children to ride in a child restraint system.
Accelerating the human body relative to the interior of an automobile is what causes injuries in the crash. Most child car seats utilize a harness to secure the child to the car seat and utilize a seat belt from the automobile to secure the child car seat to the automobile. By securing the child to the automobile interior, the child's body decelerates with the car itself and this ride down during a crash proves a safer deceleration for the child. If the harness or seat belt were to become released while the car is in motion, then the child restraint system would not provide the child any restraint or safety from a car crash.
It is an unfortunate fact that children sometimes release the harness to their safety seat not knowing the horrific dangers they fact. Moreover, the seat belt holding the car seat sometimes is released accidentally and unknowingly by riders sitting in the center back seat next to the seat belt holding the car seat. The potential of this happening may cause anxiety and tension in most parents, not only because of the safety issue but because parents will receive expensive tickets if their child is not properly restrained. To make themselves aware of whether their child is secured, most parents repeatedly turn around while the car is moving to check to see if the children are safely buckled in their seats. A drawback of this is that the parent is not able to concentrate fully on the task of driving.
What is needed is a warning system to better ensure that a child is properly restrained in a child car seat.